Beauchamp Speaks with Medical Students About Growing After ‘Falling Short’

Posted in News Stories  |  Tagged medical education, student experience

(April 21, 2025) — Starting with an anecdote about the time he “almost got kicked out of medical school,” Norman J. Beauchamp Jr., MD, MHS, executive vice president for health sciences and executive dean of the School of Medicine, told a small group of medical students about mistakes made and lessons learned throughout his career.

Titled “Falling Short of Cura Personalis,” Beauchamp’s candid presentation was organized as part of the “We Messed Up” Initiative, a student group that hosts speakers to share stories about overcoming professional and personal setbacks.

“‘We Messed Up’ was born out of my own experience of academic hardship and in many ways, how I overcame it,” said Arya Prasad (M’26, B’26). “Creating this series to support and inspire students is my way of paying it forward.”

Beauchamp expressed gratitude towards Prasad for organizing the event. “I thank you so much for how you’re making the medical school better,” he said. “This idea of, how do you leave a legacy, and starting a program like this is perfect. It’s really good. So I love to see that.”

‘No Code’ to ‘Full Code’

As a third-year medical student doing a surgical rotation, Beauchamp met a patient with metastatic cancer during rounds with the head of surgery and the chief resident. When the patient said that he did not want to have a stent to treat a kidney obstruction, the surgeon wrote in the patient’s chart that the patient was a ‘no code,’ meaning that he did not want to be resuscitated if he had a cardiac arrest.

Beauchamp pushed back immediately and said that he did not think that was what the patient wanted, but he was overruled by the surgeon and chief resident, who said that the patient had refused a procedure that would extend his life. Determined to understand the patient’s perspective, Beauchamp visited him the next morning before rounds. The patient explained that he’d previously been told he needed a procedure to treat a bowel obstruction, but the condition quickly resolved itself without intervention.

“He said, ‘I just would like to give this enough time to see if it gets better before somebody does something invasive,’” Beauchamp recalled. “So that made way more sense, but it required someone to sit for a long enough time and learn.”

When Beauchamp updated the patient’s chart to remove the “no code,” the surgeon and chief resident said that he needed to change it back or he would be kicked out of medical school. The next day, Beauchamp met with the dean, who asked what he could have done differently. Beauchamp acknowledged that he could have reached out to an assistant dean for advice or spoken with the surgeon or chief resident before updating the patient’s chart.

“He goes, ‘Yup, that’s right,’” Beauchamp said. “He said, ‘But you stood for the right things.’ So I didn’t get kicked out of medical school.”

Making Different Decisions

After sharing his experiences, Beauchamp asked the students what they would have done differently.

One student said he would have contacted the ethics consult service for an informal conversation. “I think I would just reach out and say, ‘Am I seeing this right?’” the student said. “Like, ‘I don’t feel comfortable with what’s going on here.’ I probably should have done that more this year.”

Another student said that she had been in the clinic with a patient who had just been diagnosed with ALS when a consulting physician discouraged the patient from getting the vaccines for COVID and RSV. “It was me and one other medical student and that was it,” she said. “And so I’m obviously not going to tell something to the attending, but I went to my clerkship director and talked to her about it.”

“I’m trying to envision this whole kind of situation,” a student said, considering how to update a resident after learning new information about a patient during pre-rounds. “Maybe you document, ‘The patient is saying all this,’ maybe the team can reconsider” what the chart should say after rounds, he said.

A faculty member noted that the culture of medicine has changed significantly since Beauchamp was a medical student. “I would be lying if I said that I would have done what you did,” he said. “We were encouraged to do what we were told, so I commend you for doing that.”

Lessons Learned

The stories Beauchamp shared illustrated the importance of empathy with colleagues and patients.

“I have really approached the world as, everybody needs empathy, kindness and compassion,” he said. “I recognize that everybody is doing their best, life is hard. And if you frame it that way, you won’t miss things.”

Beauchamp also urged students to recognize that their value is grounded in who they are, not what they accomplish.

“I realize that I hinged my self-concept on how I did, not who I was,” he said. “Sometimes I’m going to fall short, and that it’s going to be OK. And it’s not going to mean I’m lesser. It’s going to mean I just learned something.

“Please, please, please, never, ever, ever, ever hinge your self-concept on falling short,” he added. “Mistakes are to be learned from, not to make an assessment of self.”

Kat Zambon
GUMC Communications